US gamers fail to elect Master Chief as President

By
Cieran Douglass
– November 7, 2012Posted in: News

No catchy slogan or hook. Just a name. Because it’s a video game, not a political candidate.

In a move which shocked precisely no-one with even the briefest of knowledge about the American political system, wry comments by the gaming and other news media that the launch of Halo 4 might cause the election of Master Chief to the roll of US President have proved unfounded.

The central issue appears to be that, in an incredibly close election, people who were voting did not want to sacrifice their votes on a useless joke “write-in” which no-one would see. Master Chief, being both non-American (or even Terran) and, more importantly, fictional.

“I cannot understate enough how much of a non-event this is” said gamer Simon Wagner when we asked for his opinion on the matter. “I mean, I’m not hugely politically active or anything, and I play games as much as the next guy. Sure I was pretty psyched for the release of Halo 4, but I just picked it up from GameStop on the way back from voting. You’d have to be pretty stupid to somehow conflate a fictional universe with an important political election.”

The failure of gamers to perform in a way that was predicted by a media eager for a story to play off the fact that Halo 4‘s release date was election day has lead to some somewhat unsurprised reactions various news outlets, with outlets ranging from Fox News to NBC quietly not discussing the matter at all, as it isn’t anything which really matters because gamers are actually just regular people who vote and, in general, don’t do stupid things like elect fictional characters to the most powerful position in the world.

About Cieran Douglass

Cieran built this website in a cave with a bunch of scraps. Actually no that's not right at all, it was with Wordpress and middling Photoshop and design skills. He often plays video games and his favourites are Paper Mario TTYD, GTA San Andreas, Portal 2 and Minecraft. His display picture is not an accurate portrayal. He currently works for a much bigger website at the University of York, but if you'd like him to write something for you he can be contacted at cieran@pixelgrater.com.